By any sound economic appraisal of the Medicare system, the generation of Americans younger than 35 will never receive benefits from this welfare program. The program cannot continue to fund itself in its current form. Yet any mention of cutting benefits is met with the most vehement resistance from our elder generation.
The old of this country apparently fail to see that by selfishly pursuing the destruction of this program for their own gain, they will break the social contract with the young who have to fund it. If those of us younger than 35 or our children will never benefit from Medicare, why should we continue to lavishly fund it through our working years?
More importantly, our elders apparently fail to see that the rapidly rising costs of Medicare are in large part due to a medical-industrial complex in need of serious reform.
The factors that corrupt this system are generally agreed upon. First, everyone gets treated at the hospital, whether one has insurance or not. That is the law. So that many people receive care and pay nothing for it.
Insurance companies routinely discriminate against the unhealthy by refusing coverage. While pharmaceutical companies lobby to erect barriers to the drug market via FDA regulations, keeping their prices high, and encouraging doctors to treat all illnesses with pills. Finally, the insurance market is structured so that no one can afford coverage without being sponsored by an employer.
In 2009, most Americans were in agreement that this dysfunctional system needed to be reformed. But that was before the industry’s brilliant propaganda campaign. During the summer, it has been widely reported that more than $100 million was spent on ads by the medical-industrial complex.
The ads were full of lies designed to scare the aged, who have in the course of one generation become completely dependent on the government for medical care. The most successful lie was the biggest: that the government planned to create “death panels” to decide on end-of-life care.
Propaganda is most effective when it is easily repeated and clearly conveys the desired message. The “death panel” slogan was lucid, short and terrifying, and thus incredibly powerful. Once the elderly had been sufficiently frightened, their fear quickly led to widespread anger.
The next move in the industry campaign was to channel this manufactured rage into political action. The summer recess was the perfect opportunity, and corporate-sponsored PR firms organized political groups like Recess Rally to encourage angry citizens to vent at the town-hall meetings. Moreover, electronic media covered only the most vicious behavior of participants in these public forums, where the fear of losing medical benefits was on display in the most desperate tones.
This highly orchestrated effort effectively politicized an issue that most Americans had agreed on just a few months before. Stepping into the confusion, opinion peddlers stood ready to explain the complex proposals for reform in the dumbest and most partisan terms. As usual, the most outrageous drew the most listeners (and thus sponsors) which effectively polarized the debate.
The result of the propaganda campaign and subsequent media frenzy is the political backlash and deadlock apparent after the recent Massachusetts election. This state of affairs plays directly into the hands of powerful interests that operate with their eyes on short term gain instead of long term sustainability.
The 2009 annual report by the Social Security and Medicare boards says that Social Security costs are problematic, but manageable. It contrasts this with Medicare which it says will not be a viable program without cost controls. If incremental reform is blocked, then it will guarantee a crisis of the Medicare system in the future — a failure to pay benefits.
It is an ancient truth that what can only be built slowly and skillfully, can be destroyed in seconds. Those who doubt the possible collapse of the Medicare system should consider that it is now being funded largely by U.S. Treasury bills sold to foreigners, and this type of funding is always precarious.
As we have seen recently on Wall Street, when confidence in debtors declines, it rarely happens incrementally. Rather it collapses all at once. So the danger to the Medicare program is from both sources of its funding.
When young people understand they will not benefit from the program, they may rightfully refuse to be taxed for it. If foreigners begin to doubt the federal government’s ability to pay back its debt, they may refuse to lend to it.
A mature society does not allow confidence to morph into fantasy, believing all is well when it is not. It recognizes its shortcomings in advance of a crisis and addresses them.
Allowing powerful interests to politicize issues that concern us all is a sign of weakness. Strength in a republic is found in the resolve to form a common will, and endure difficulty and sacrifice in order to improve the country, one reform at a time.
Jesse Corn is a Gainesville native and a Forsyth County resident. His column appears every other Friday and on gainesvilletimes.com.